Hugo Mudie has long thought that to be a real one, “you had to die young or come close”. It will have taken too many years to understand it: the authenticity of a punk rocker is not measured by his will to launch himself without a helmet into the hoops of fire of excess, but rather by his refusal to abdicate.
Cult figure of theunderground Montrealer, Hugo Mudie has signed a dozen albums with his groups The Sainte Catherines, Yesterday’s Ring and Miracles. He had, however, never embraced his vulnerability with such abandon as on bad vibeshis third solo album, at the heart of which references to Pierre Bertrand, bassist of Beau Dommage, and Matt Freeman, bassist of Rancid, do not appear as contradictions.
“I’m not a popular singer, I don’t think I really want to be,” he proclaims on The secret of the godsa tender moment on this album which gives both the velocity of a traditional punk rock, in the grunge ball-of-rubber Weezer style (The fuck you in the eyes) and in epic prog punk (Dianaa bit as if the soundtrack of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater had made love with Elton John).
Confessions of a veteran mutilated by his years in the marginal trenches, bad vibes also shines through his lyrics, where pathos and humor become two sides of the same coin. Whether he offers advice to his young comrade Guilhem or confides to a friend his disappointment at not receiving his calls since he quit drugs (Taste Taste Dollsa surprisingly poignant duet with Guillaume Beauregard), Hugo Mudie knows how to put his self-mockery at the service of his introspection, and vice versa.
“I have a wound that does not want to heal”, he lamented in 2022 in the pages of his first collection of poems, Watch them slide their feet in the sandbox. It is today by digging into his wounds that he soothes ours a little. “I will continue to sing in a lost cause”, promises the one who has won the most important battle: staying alive.
punk-rock
bad vibes
Hugo Mudie
Music Mansion Records